Who was The more Popular in The U.K - Prince Naseem Hamed Or Chris Eubank?

I personally preferred Chris Eubank as for entertainment value he was on alot of television programmes and his appeal was much broader being on shows like The Big Breakfast and They Think it's All Over and he resonated way more with the public as most of his fights were broadcast on terrestrial television with Michael Watson and Nigel Benn. Prince Nassem Hamed was a northerner, younger and way more arrogant than Eubank he may well have earned more with his fights being on Sky Sports and being sponsored by Adidas etc but generally I think Eubank was much more popular.

 

Preferred Eubank and most over the age of 18 would say the same.

To the aged 3 to aged 19 year old males, Hamed was like them! That was his demographic.

Most adults found Eubank hilarious and couldn’t get enough of him. While the small-minded chav-types couldn’t grasp that it was all tongue in cheek with Eubank!
Kids waited up on a Saturday night to see him leap over the ropes with their parents.

No celebrity was on the chat show circuit more than Eubank in the early 90s. Forget just boxers. 14M tuned in every couple of months for years on end, it was like nothing else in all honesty.

Naz was fun though.

 

Prince Naseem had a video game.

 

Hi there Fergy. I preferred Eubank - he had the more interesting personality. Quite eccentric and quirky at times. I think the majority of us boxing fans would agree. Hamed I admired as a boxer but I never particularly took to him as a character.

 

I saw him on an interview a few years back. He seemed a bit more reserved and reflective - grown up a bit no doubt.

 

I don't live in the UK. Only a couple of Chris Eubank fights were ever shown live on US television (the second Benn fight, one of the Carl Thompson fights, maybe a couple others). And before digital television, analog signals in the UK were PAL and in the US they were NTSC, so you couldn't even trade videos with someone in the UK unless they had a video converter. (It was about $20 a tape to take them to a transfer company in the US).

But I found a guy in the UK who had a PAL to NTSC converter and started trading boxing VHS tapes with him. Every couple of weeks, he'd record any fights on TV in the UK and mail them to me and I'd do the same for fights in the US and mail them to him. So I was always a couple weeks behind.

But we traded when Eubank signed to do his "world tour" ... and I believe he fought six times in 1994. Totally won me over. I couldn't wait to get those tapes and watch those fights and scurried to get my hands on his older fights.

Great showman. Even when the fights were close.

Personally, I liked him better.

Hamed, I also liked. Unlike Eubank, US networks were showing his title fights. And HBO hopped on board and signed him to a deal. He became part of their promotional campaigns aimed at boxing fans.

But I believe Naseem sort of got a raw deal after 9/11. HBO was building him up to be a big star. After losing the Barrera fight, he was certainly still a major player. One loss isn't a career killer. And he was one of those cocky villains everyone in the US loved to tune in to watch to see him get beaten.

But after 9/11, which came a few months after his loss to Barrera, I'd argue that put a whole kabosh on HBO hyping Hamed in the US. People in the US wanted blood. Muslims had a real rough time of it here. And HBO kind of walked away from Hamed after that and Showtime didn't jump up and grab him, either. I'm sure that kind of rattled Naseem.

He fought once more in the UK and then retired.

Despite the fact he was a future Hall of Famer who was in his prime and one of the biggest growing stars in the sport, he all but vanished and was basically gone a year later as the US went on the warpath. Global circumstances sort of worked against him, IMO.

He was only 27 when he lost ot Barrera. And he'd only have one more fight a year later.

The fact that he didn't get in the Boxing Hall of Fame on the first ballot, IMO, was also scandalous. Then again, the Hall of Fame is in New York. And I think boxing writers from that region still harbor bad feelings toward Hamed that they didn't hold against converted muslims they grew up watching who lived nearby, like Dwight Qawi and Saad Muhammad.

 

Really great post and thanks for an alternative perspective. I had a VHS player that played both PAL and NSTC video tapes but not everyone had those types of video players. I'd actually be really interested in learning more about fans trading fight tapes it really takes me back. People take it forgranted that almost every fight is uploaded to YouTube these days and most fans information came from Boxing News , The Ring Magazine and other boxing related books back then.

 

He suggested I subscribe to Boxing News so I knew who the boxers were (because unless you were a big name we didn't see them), so I did for several years. So I followed guys like Willie Quinn (People in the audience would sing "You ain't seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn") and Neville Brown. Guys who never saw the light of day on US shows.

I'm glad I still have those Boxing News issues.

People with YouTube have ZERO idea how difficult was to not only see old fights but fights that happened last weekend in other parts of the world.

YouTube and social media changed everything for boxing fans.

 

I never related it to 9/11.

Bottom line is MAB ate his soul. He had no taste for fighting after he took a loss (I wouldn’t even say a terrible beating, although Naz was completely outclassed).

He only fought once more, and not against a top name, so I think it’s on him for not picking himself up and shaking it off and getting back at it. Typical front-runner. I think he had gotten to the point that he could have done some things on the world stage — win a few against meaningful fighters and then rematch MAB for the big money.

Instead, he took his ball and went home.

I’m borderline on Naz as a hall of fame guy. He won some meaningful fights but they also built up fights against nobodies like Daniel Alecia (who knocked him down) and Augie Sanchez as big deals but really he was only WBO champ for a good bit of his time at the championship level … and the WBO at that time was a trinket offered to UK fighters who weren’t winning Big Three (WBC/WBA/IBF) titles.

To me he didn’t even register til he beat Tom Johnson, and Kelley was a quality win. Much of the rest though was more show biz than actual accomplishment.

 

I traded with a guy from New Zealand for a few years as well. His name was Will Halley. He used to supplement his income with the boxing tapes I'd send him from the US. He was an older guy. He used to include cassette tapes along with the boxing tapes where he'd talk about boxing. When my first child was born in 91, he mailed us a Busy Bee, which was this little pull toy popular in New Zealand. I'd never heard of it. But we still have it in a box in the basement.

That was more than 30 years ago. I'm sure he's deceased by now. He was a good guy. He would've loved being on boxing boards.